A WITHAM secondary school academy and sixth form has secured a 'good' Ofsted report for the third time.

Ofsted said pupils at New Rickstones Academy displayed “positive attitudes towards their education” but that “a few teachers” were not “sufficiently trained" to deliver the ambition of the new key curriculum.  

The inspection took place in November.

The report said the school had a broad range of extra-curricular activities, with basketball, drama, a maths club and “a fantasy role-playing game” all being popular.  

Staff were also “proud to work at the school” and the safeguarding arrangements were found to be effective.

Staff were praised for being consistent with ensuring students knew that if anyone did or said anything inappropriate that “adults would deal with it immediately”.

Inspector Bessie Owens explained how the school “uses information effectively” to enable pupils who need extra support to become “confident readers” in library sessions.

But the report also said that not all staff were consistently well trained to support all pupils with meeting the new key stage three curriculum – referring typically to the first three years of secondary education.

Ofsted added that sometimes work given to pupils “lacks ambition” for what they should achieve.

In other instances, teachers checked pupils' knowledge, but did not properly use this information to “clarify pupils’ misunderstandings”.

The report said that a “minority of teachers” did not provide pupils with targeted opportunities to get better in areas they have struggled in and said this meant some children “do not achieve as highly as they should”.

The school, which was last inspected in 2018, had high attendance for most pupils and had “effective processes” in place for identifying and supporting pupils with special educational needs and or disabilities.

In order for New Rickstones Academy to improve, Ofsted said the school needed to identify where gaps in knowledge are to ensure staff were skilled in providing “appropriate activities to improve”.

The report also said: “In the main, staff are skilled at delivering the intended curriculum, including in the sixth form.”